


Ghost

by mustachio



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustachio/pseuds/mustachio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Altaïr misses his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost

He doesn’t visit Malik’s grave very often. 

Even when he goes to Maria’s, only a few feet away from his, he doesn’t take the few steps it would take to visit him and he thinks that Malik probably would have preferred it that way. Altaïr has more important things to do than to stand at a grave and remember their time together or think of what could have been if he had lived. He has work to do for the Brotherhood and he can think of those things when it’s done. He doesn’t have to stand in front of a slab of stone to do it.

And when he does go he thinks he can hear Malik telling his as much. He thinks he can feel Malik standing next to him, posture stiff as ever, and hand at his hip. If he looks over, sometimes he thinks he can see Malik even though Altaïr knows he couldn’t possibly be there. Ghosts aren’t real. But for a few moments he likes to believe that it really is Malik and not a phantom his mind created to make up for the absence of his best friend. Sometimes, he’ll even ask the imaginary apparition for advice. The answer is always the same – the one the real Malik would give him whenever he asked for advice.

“You truly need me to answer that, Altaïr?”

Malik – when he was living and as this ghost – would roll his eyes and give a heavy sigh.

“Even as Grand Master you still act more like a novice. Why should I help you with this when I have my own work to do?”

He would help, of course. He didn’t make Malik his right hand man because he didn’t give his help when it was needed. Silence would follow and it would be comfortable and _comforting_ like it was when they were young and just starting out as the leaders of the Order. But eventually it would end.

“Go, Altaïr. You shouldn’t be here. Restore the Order as you once did years ago. You don’t need me at your side to do it.”

Altaïr would turn on him – on the apparition he had, by this point, so thoroughly convinced himself was at his side – to protest, to insist that there are some things he just can’t do as well as he once did without Malik by his side, but there’s never anyone there. Whatever he had thought was there is gone now; was probably never there. Whatever advice he believes he had gotten from Malik just now was really the memory of the advice given to him by his best friend long ago.

He is slow to leave. He spares a last glance at the grave and he knows that wherever Malik is right now, he’s giving Altaïr that disapproving stare Malik so often gave him. He has work to do, he should be doing it, he knows. But it never feels right without Malik there. Even with Darim and Tazim – Malik’s own son – it doesn’t feel right. Either way, it doesn’t matter and eventually he does go back.

Malik is dead and a ghost can’t lead the Order by his side.


End file.
